Child Victims and Witnesses Required to Attend a Trial Related Hearing at Court

| | 2015 | Jan - Sept 2016 | |----------------|------|-----------------| | Child Victims/Witnesses | 15,628 | 11,088 |

Data Source: CPS Witness Management Information System

(1) Total number of victims and witnesses, identified as a child, associated with cases that have witness related hearings (trial, trial, newton hearing, special reasons hearing or an appeal against conviction) in all courts.

(2) A child, in the Compass Witness Management System, is defined as a victim or witness aged under 18.

(a) Required attendance is defined as the number of required attendances at court. If a witness is required to attend more than one hearing, the Witness Management System (WMS) will count each time they are required to attend.

(b) A witness may be called or summonsed to attend a court hearing but may not necessarily give evidence; the hearing may take place before the defendant enters a guilty plea.

- The CPS records some limited data, identifying the number of victims and witnesses, whether they are required to attend hearing and attendance at the same, recorded in the Witness Management System (WMS).
- The WMS is a purpose built electronic system designed to enable Witness Care Unit (WCU) staff to manage their cases includes enabling them to identify cases involving children and other vulnerable or intimidated victims and witnesses so that they can provide appropriate support and information.
- Victim and witness data are only recorded if a case is handled by a WCU which uses WMS. Not all cases are managed by a WCU and a number of CPS Areas do not use WMS. It follows that there are many cases for which victim and witness information is not recorded.

1. CPS data are available through its Case Management System (CMS) and associated Management Information System (MI) collects data to assist in the effective management of its prosecution functions. The CPS does not collect data that constitutes statistics as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

2. These data have been drawn from the CPS’s administrative IT system, which (as with any large scale recording system) is possible errors with data entry and processing. The figures are provisional and subject to change as more information is recorded. We are committed to improving the quality of our data and from mid-June 2015 introduced a new data assurance regime to explain some unexpected variance in some future data sets.

3. The official statistics relating to crime and policing are maintained by the Home Office (HO) and the official statistics relating to sentencing, criminal court proceedings, offenders brought to justice, the courts and the judiciary are maintained by the Ministry (MOJ). part-heard

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